Prague for The Thrill Seekers: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

299 steps up the 1891 Eiffel copy on the hill, the castle at eye level and the whole river bend below; take the stairs, not the lift.

Hire a rowing boat for an hour from the island below the National Theatre and pull upstream past the Charles Bridge piers before the sun goes.

A big 1900s pub on the Smíchov side of the Legion Bridge, pork knuckle and tank Pilsner at long tables, the first calories of the weekend.

A dawn run around the old royal game park, ponds and planetarium, flat loops of three and five kilometres with nobody else on the gravel.

The Olympic-standard whitewater channel by the zoo hires out rafts with a guide; an hour of drops and eddies, wetsuit included, then the river sun.

Fried cheese, svíčková and unpasteurised Pilsner under vaults by the Charles Bridge, the recovery meal the Czechs invented first.

Thirty-five flat kilometres on the Vltava and Berounka paths to the castle town, bike hired in Prague, the climb to Charles IV's walls at the end.

Bohemia's longest cave system, a kilometre of limestone galleries and a medieval counterfeiters' workshop found inside; a jumper and a guide.

A beef restaurant with its own ageing room, the cuts listed by the cow, tartare and a Czech steak with potato purée; booked ahead.

A fifty-metre outdoor pool heated year-round under the Vyšehrad rock, steam coming off the water in winter; lengths at opening.

138 steps up Peter Parler's gothic gate tower to the gallery over the bridge, the climb short and the view of the castle the one you came for.

A butcher's counter where the order is weighed, grilled and eaten standing: dry-aged beef, pork sausages and a beer before the airport bus.